1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image management method, and in particular, relates to an image management method in a digital camera.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, a digital camera (hereinafter, this is also called as a compound eye digital camera) equipped with two or more image pickup systems is known (e.g., refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-149483). In the digital camera described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-149483, one set of images with each parallax is obtained from two or more image pickup systems, and this set of images are stored in one file.
In addition, there are the following patent documents (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2001-222083, 2004-343549, 2005-94145, 2004-129186, and 2005-311985 respectively) as those relating to the present application.
Nevertheless, like Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-149483, in the case of storing them in one file, there is a problem that it takes considerable time to search and display a desired image because all data has to be read out when displaying a set of 2D images (or when displaying an image at a specific viewpoint).